


Nothing Will Stop Me (So I Must Stop You)

by polandspringz



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, What-If, slight body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22397518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polandspringz/pseuds/polandspringz
Summary: All of his screws and bolts were flying up and away, wrenched out of him as his flesh was pulled down. He could feel his chest tears open at the seam and if he looked up he was certain his neck would snap and fall back and he would see his heart float away, unbeating and stone cold like the rest of his robotic form.But then, the kingdom crashed down, and the world was silent.Ironwood fails to recognize Ozpin and Oscar as different people. Even with a destroyed body, he shows no willingness to give up the fight. A harsh decision is made, mercy is granted.
Relationships: James Ironwood & Oscar Pine, James Ironwood & Ozpin, Ozpin & Oscar Pine
Comments: 3
Kudos: 70





	Nothing Will Stop Me (So I Must Stop You)

**Author's Note:**

> A what-if scenario written after V7E11 and before E12 about Ironwood refusing to give up even when his body, mind, and heart can take no more. There is no better plan of action right now, but Ozpin and Oscar alike know that this cannot go on.

Before the lift even landed, he was leaping off of it, stumbling onto the narrow walkway towards the open vault. He pushed past figures shorter than him, shoving his way through the crowd lined up with weapons drawn. Some of them faltered when they saw the state of him, others nearly lost their stance when he knocked them over the side, the yelps and gasps all blended into the rush of the wind as he continued forward. A hand reached for his left arm, something sounding like a bird crying out in alarm. A growl of pain erupted from his chest and the hand easily flew back and let him pass. Hands kept flying back, to catch their comrades from falling, from touching the cold, artificial demon rushing towards them, but as he reached the edge of the path, no matter how hard he yearned, he could not will his hands to reach up towards the stoop of the vault.

He could not will his left hand, burned to muscle and nerves fried because it had been weak, vulnerable flesh. He could not will his right hand because it had been blown away, ripped apart into nothing more than wires and shrapnel that now hung dead at his side.

He could only look with his eyes, his mouth open as he gasped out a plea to the girl and boy standing at the top. The boy stood guard against the post of the door, the girl stood just inside of it, her hands at her sides even as she stood so close to the relic of creation.

“No! Stop! Please! Ruby!”

His vision wavered with the sting of hot, bitter water as he saw the silver eyes glance down at him, her round and childish face pressed into a frown with a furrowed brow as she stared at him. She was looking at him with _pity._ She was _sad_ seeing him, but it was obvious by the flame within them that it was not for the _mistake_ she was making.

His heart became ablaze and he looked to the boy, desperation beading down his face alongside the tears.

“Oz! You can’t do this!”

The boy’s face was blank. He turned away. His eyes were drawn back to the girl, darting towards her hand as it began raising, her fingers crawling towards the staff as she stared him down.

“General Ironwood, I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

Her voice did not echo, as she spoke it softly. There was no screech, nothing more than a small scratch as the staff was twisted and lifted from its seat on the throne. And then, all at once, the world collapsed.

The hum of the vault rose to a scream as the ground was yanked out from under him. Brought to his knees, gravity was dragging him back down, yanking on the metal sockets of his joints and tearing them apart and he could not even roar in pain as he wished. He was too stunned, too shell shocked by the sight of the abyss expanding before him. Around the narrow platform, he could feel himself and the entire city being yanked into its grasp. Soon they would be swallowed whole, crashing into the water and tundra before they were drowned and dragged deeper into the earth. All of his screws and bolts were flying up and away, wrenched out of him as his flesh was pulled down. He could feel his chest tears open at the seam and if he looked up he was certain his neck would snap and fall back and he would see his heart float away, unbeating and stone cold like the rest of his robotic form.

But then, the kingdom crashed down, and the world was silent.

And Ironwood realized that he had not moved- that there was still a safe ground beneath him.

There was the tinkling of glass almost, like a bell’s chime before a new steady hum began to rumble in the room. Underneath him, there was blackness, but not an abyss. Instead one of the Schnee’s glyphs rotated up from the darkness and spun to a stop like a gear frozen in place. He watched it as it was stained from white to a dark gray, and was stretching out like a netting over the abyss.

When his world stopped spinning, he twisted around. And he saw her with the rapier plunged into the ground, hair exploding behind her back in a big braid, a mess of blues and reds instead of the neat and stiff pressed white he had grown accustomed to seeing.

Her eyes burned bright, they weren’t dulled by shame or fear like when he had last seen her. When he had given his orders to arrest her and her team and to send her sister to slaughter.

He blinked in shock when she raised her head and smiled at him. _Wait,_ no, not him, he realized sadly. Her smile started when she started to stand from her kneel, blossoming into a genuine, happy grin when she looked to the blonde huntsman who they had traveled with. His hand was on her shoulder, there was a bright glow of aura passing over the two of them. She was smiling at the rest of her teammates, the ones he had nearly tossed into the depths when he entered. They were smiling back. They were all so happy. He couldn’t understand why.

The glyph beneath his feet was enormous. It was then he realized it stretching out far, far beyond his collapsed form and far beyond the reaches of the vault, vanishing under the walls and likely far across the grounds of the academy. There was the beep of a scroll, and then someone talking. Their expressions grew impossibly wider. The girl leapt towards her teammates and hugged them, and they laughed. It was then it finally dawned on him. They were smiling because she had done the impossible. She had stopped them from crashing into the icy sea, drowning themselves and Mantle in the impact and instead lowered them down like a feather, placing them gently into the sea so that some waves would surface, but nothing as grand and as fearsome as it would have been.

There were footsteps, and then he heard something else fall. It was only two soft impacts though, steel toe boots clinking as rose petals receded back to take the shape of the girl and the heavier sound of the boy stumbling as he landed on the walkway beside her. The lamp glowed on his hip, and the staff glowed in her fist. They stood hand in hand, the girl having gently rested hers in what the boy had offered, and for a moment, it was like Ironwood was looking at a crowning ceremony, a royal portrait. A king was passing his title over to a new ruler. A new queen.

The girl’s hand slipped away from the boy’s, and she strode towards him. Her eyes narrowed as she still stood above him, glaring down at him. He felt pathetic, weak. He had been ripped to shreds already in an effort to get here, to get to _this stage._ What else could she possibly hope to take from him?

“We will be leaving Atlas. We will be taking both the lamp and the staff with us. You will not get in our way.”

She walked passed, rejoined her teammates. He did not look back. She had been merciful, and he merely bowed his head as she did.

A pair of red boots stopped in front of him. He had been wrong. He looked up with hope, shoulders rolling forward as he longed to reach up towards the man who would offer him salvation.

He looked into the pained eyes of a boy, and the hope in his chest bloomed. _Yes,_ _that’s right. He’s just a boy! He will forgive! He will understand!_

“James…” The voice that came out was Oscar’s, but the echo of the room did something to it. It twisted it, making it sound more aged, tinny and wiser beyond his years, “What...happened to you?”

It sounded wrong.

He shut down. His heart was gone, yet he still felt it fluttering with panic. He continued to try and reach out, the broken wires of his metal arm dragging along the floor with a groan. The boy’s eyes were glowing, that _had to mean something!_

“Ozpin… I can explain… You haven’t seen… You don’t understand, you haven’t been here, you haven’t-”

“General, I’m truly disappointed,” the boy said, his voice still sounding older and wiser, but _Oz would never say that to-_ “Ruby’s right. This has to stop now.”

He walked past him, the lamp swinging on the belt of his hip as he passed. Ironwood twisted around, trying to grab onto him. _Screw the lamp,_ he thought, trying to crawl towards the boy’s shoe, his mangled arm falling to move. _I can’t let him go again!_

He fell forward, the side of his face scraping against the metal ground. For a moment, he thought that this was it, and he felt the exhaustion creeping up into him as his eyes closed. They shot open when he felt hands on him, pulling him up.

“Don’t touch me!” He shouted, twisted away from the boy even as he was helped to his feet, “If all you’re going to do is scold me and run then I don’t want your filthy hands on me! I don’t need your pity. Just leave already!”

Oscar looked up at him with sternness, “We can’t leave you here to die.”

Ironwood jerked away, “Winter will find me. It won’t be long. She’ll know what happened and come find me and if not Penny and Pietro and-”

“Winter won’t be coming,” the Schnee girl said, crestfallen, “She’s not coming to save you ever again.”

Ironwood looked at her with awe. Then shame filled him.

“Penny and Pietro won’t be coming either,” Ruby said, holding the staff close as she ducked herself behind her sister and Blake, “The people of Mantle needs them more than Atlas or _you_ do.”

Oscar was still hovering nearby. Ironwood violently wrenched himself away, walking towards the dead end beneath the vault. He would wait for them to leave, then figure this out himself.

_“Go,”_ he hissed, not looking back. He listened to the beeping of the lift, someone tapping away on the screen as they selected one of the upper floors. He waited for the sound of it whirring up into the sky.

There was a loud rumble and then the ground was moving and James was flailing. _An aftershock,_ the still coherent part of his brain reasoned. _Or more appropriately, the water._ They should have thought better than thinking once they had landed, the ocean would be gracious in letting them stay. It was too late though. Without his arms he had no balance and he had decided to walk this way. All too quickly he saw that abyss reaching for him again, his human body falling forward, heavy with defeat as it accepted it before his mind caught up with the decision. Still, the loose wires swung back and finally snapped off, and he was being dragged down, his humanity returning to the dust where it belonged.

Or it should have, had it not been for something yanking on the back of his sling, then another hand scrambling for his collar, and the harsh choking sensation that followed before he was successfully finding leverage under his feet again. He stumbled backwards and was caught by arms behind him before he was staring down at Oscar again. He saw the dark grays and reds he had come to associate with Qrow in his peripheral, but his gaze was currently stunned by the boy struggling through his tears as multiple voices echoed from his mouth.

_“You’re so foolish-”_

_“-I can’t believe you would be so selfish, even now-”_

_“-I had faith in you-”_

_“-I was so scared this entire time you would be like Leo-”_

_“-But you were worse than Leo, because you weren’t him-”_

_“-I let another person get hurt again and I can’t-”_

_“-I didn’t want it to be like this_ and you know that!” He shouted, throwing his hands out in exasperation. All the noise blended into one, that strange glow slowly fading to none as the boy continued to sob over a man _he_ hardly knew, “I didn’t want it to come to this, but it’s always the same! I didn’t want to tell everything because it always ends up like this!”

The boy raised his fist, and Ironwood prepared for a strike, but instead he pounded his own chest, right over is heart as the tears of a thousand lifetimes streamed down his cheeks.

“And the same goes for me too. _I_ always make the same mistake. I am just lucky this time I’m learning to give up before it’s too late.”

_On Salem?_

“This can’t go on James. You can’t continue in this fight with us. We are leaving you here.”

_On me,_ the General realized, and an empty feeling took root in his chest. The boy wiped more tears away.

“We are leaving you here,” he repeated when his voice was stronger, “in Atlas. You have no power, you will not be able to recover from this in time to rejoin us. But, it’s for the best. We will take you to the surface. We will find you safety, and then we will be _leaving you behind.”_

“Oz,” Ironwood still tried to move forward, but Qrow held him back, “Please, the people already know! They will be looking to me for answers, I will need to guide them-”

“James,” and this time _Oscar_ glared up at him, and even though his eyes were glowing and aura was rushing over him and his voice still held that mature echo and he was holding the handle of the cane in his one hand the same way Oz had always done, “ _You_ seem to be the only one unable to tell who is who anymore.”

His gaze held more though. More words threatened to spill from his tongue, but the tears were eating them up again. His face was stained red and puffy like a child’s.

“I didn’t want it to come to this…”

_You are not with **me** , _was echoed as two more tears hit the floor, pooling with others against the metal floor.

He looked to Qrow, and then walked past, “I’m sorry,” his voice cracked, “I need to go join the others.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure he gets up alright,” Qrow rasped, “We’ll be up in a little while.”

He watched over his shoulder as Oscar rushed towards the lift, one arm still raised as he sobbed into his sleeve. He hurriedly hopped onto the platform and hid away as he rose into the sky, disappearing overhead as the lift went sideways before ascending farther up.

“Poor kid,” Qrow sighed, “He probably doesn’t fully understand where those feelings are coming from.”

_But he does,_ James wanted to say, wanted to shout. _How could he choose them over me, when they still don’t realize, when the only other one who heard those words still doesn’t realize that it was Ozpin not-_  
  


“We’ll give him ten minutes,” Qrow said, pulling him over to the control panel before he sat the both of them down and pulled out his flask, “He’s gonna need time to hide.”

It certainly wasn’t an appropriate time, but Ironwood couldn’t resist his desire to get the last word in. He scoffed, “I thought you quit?”

Qrow took a swig of the flash before he sloshed it around in his hand. His red eyes lazily traced its movements before the shot towards him and pierced him like a bullet, “I did. But I need to dull myself before I go breaking my promise to the kid and go pushing you over the edge myself.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is not meant to be an anti-Ironwood fic! I really feel like he is being well-written in the way that he is being forced to take drastic measures to ensure safety of those he cares about. He's not black and white in being right, and I think it would be interesting to see how far CRWBY would be willing to go with his dedication being his biggest flaw. I hope to see more of his and Ozpin/Oscar's dynamic soon.


End file.
